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Download File Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s Florence Julia Alexandra Siemon Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 ©2015 Julia Alexandra Siemon All rights reserved ABSTRACT Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s Florence Julia Alexandra Siemon This dissertation examines paintings by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino, and by his teacher, Jacopo Pontormo. It takes as its focus works created during the period of 1529-39, a decade of political uncertainty and social unrest predating Bronzino’s career as court painter. The study begins during the brutal Siege of Florence in 1529-30, which brought an end to the last Florentine republic. Although the republic’s defeat made way for the establishment of the Medici duchy, the 1530s were marked by fervent and unrelenting republican opposition to the new dukes. These circumstances provide the background to this study, in which paintings by Bronzino and Pontormo are shown to offer eloquent—if sometimes cautious—comment on recent political events. The initial chapters address the relationship between two paintings carried out during the Siege, reconciling Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi) with its allegorical cover, Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea. The first chapter reconsiders the role of Venus in Bronzino’s painting, attributing to her a rousing, rather than pacifying, influence; she is shown to be a deity especially well-suited for reverence by young Florentine soldiers, and a fitting subject for the cover of Pontormo’s republican portrait. The second chapter explores the specific political significance of Bronzino’s artistic choices, paying special attention to his allusion to Michelangelo’s marble David, whose form he incorporates into the figure of Pygmalion’s beloved Galatea. The young hero David—shown to be one of the period’s most potent republican symbols—is somehow manifest in each of the paintings considered, linking the four chapters. But whereas the Pygmalion and Galatea and Portrait of a Halberdier are explained as republican pictures created under republican rule, the portraits examined in the third and fourth chapters are presented as subversive images created under the Medici dukes. The third chapter reinterprets Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (c. 1537), as an expression of republican opposition to ducal rule. The fourth chapter proposes a new dating for Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni—presently understood as a republican picture dating to the period of the Siege— relocating its origin to c. 1538-9, well after the republic’s defeat. This reassessment has important implications for a number of portraits by both artists, and it calls into question currently accepted art-historical approaches to Florentine culture in the 1530s. By identifying examples of republican factionalism in portraits painted by Pontormo and Bronzino under Medici rule, this dissertation discovers political dissent where previously considered impossible. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: An Encounter at Dawn ....................................................................................26 CHAPTER TWO: Flesh and Stone...............................................................................................65 CHAPTER THREE: Painting David in the City of Goliath .......................................................101 CHAPTER FOUR: A More Audacious Portrait .........................................................................155 CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................190 ILLUSTRATIONS .....................................................................................................................197 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................229 i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES CHAPTER I 1.1: Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1529-30. Oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi. 1.2: Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi), c.1529-30. Oil on panel, transferred to canvas, J. Paul Getty Museum. 1.3: Pontormo, Study for St. Francis, c.1518-21. Black chalk heightened with white, Galleria degli Uffizi [6744F recto]. 1.4: Pontormo, Venus and Cupid, c. 1515. Red chalk. Galleria degli Uffizi [341F]. 1.5: Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars, and Cupid, c. 1505. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. 1.6: Marco Zoppo, Venus Victrix, c. 1465-74(?). Pen, brown ink on vellum, British Museum. 1.7: Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, details. 1.8: Dante, Divine Comedy (Paradiso VIII). Fourteenth-century manuscript illumination with Dante and Beatrice conversing, Venus, Taurus, and Libra. Bodleian Library. 1.9: Angelo Poliziano, Stanze di messer Angelo Poliziano incominciate per le giostre di Giuliano de’ Medici, anonymous woodcut illustration. Florentine edition, 1494. (Reprinted in Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks,” 36.) 1.10: Titian, Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter, c.1503-12. Oil on canvas, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. CHAPTER II 2.1: Michelangelo, David (with image flipped on vertical axis), c. 1504. Marble, Florence, Accademia 2.2: Donatello, David, c. 1408-9. Marble, Florence, Bargello. 2.3: Donatello, David, c. 1435-40. Bronze, Florence, Bargello. 2.4: Copy after Michelangelo, David, in position in front of the Palazzo della Signoria. 2.5: Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (?), Portrait of a Condottiero, c. 1510. Oil on panel, National Gallery London. 2.6: Vasari, Procession of Pope Leo X through the Piazza della Signoria in 1515, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio. 2.7: Vasari, Reception of the Insignia of Command, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio. 2.8: Stradanus, Piazza del Mercato Vecchio. Fresco, Palazzo Vecchio, c.1562-72. 2.9: Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c.1478. Tempera on panel, Uffizi. 2.10: Giambologna (after Niccolò Tribolo), Venus-Fiorenza Fountain, c.1560-70. Florence, Villa la Petraia. 2.11: Bronzino, Primavera (Venus-Fiorenza), 1545-6. Tapestry, Palazzo Pitti. 2.12: Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Young Man, c.1545. Oil on panel, St. Louis Art Museum. ii CHAPTER III 3.1: Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, c. 1537. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. 3.2: Antonio Rossellino(?) David, c.1461/79. Marble, National Gallery of Art, Washington. 3.3: Bronzino, Ugolino Martelli, detail. 3.4: Bronzino, Allegorical Portrait of Dante, 1532-3. Oil on canvas, private collection. 3.5: Bronzino, Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, 1527-8 or 1532-4. Oil on panel. Milan, Sforzesco. 3.6: Hans Burgkmair, Genealogy of Maximilian I (Hector), 1509-12. Woodcut. 3.7: Michelangelo, Brutus, c. 1539. Marble, Museo del Bargello. CHAPTER IV 4.1: Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni), c. 1529-30/ 1538-9. Oil on panel, London, National Gallery. 4.2 Violante Vanni, after Lorenzo Lorenzi, Portrait of a Young Man. In Raccolta di ottanta Stampe rappresentanti i Quadri più scelte de’ Signori Marchesi Gerini, 1759. 4.3: Comparison: Pontormo, Portrait of Carlo Neroni and Portrait of Francesco Guardi. 4.4: Comparison: Michelangelo, David and Pontormo, Portrait of Carlo Neroni. 4.5: Comparison: Bronzino, Portrait of Laura Battiferri, c. 1558. Oil on panel, Palazzo Vecchio, and Bronzino, Dante, c. 1532. Black chalk, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung. 4.6: Pontormo, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand. 1529-30. Oil on panel, Palazzo Pitti. 4.7: Bronzino, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand (and detail), 1529-3. Oil on panel, Uffizi. 4.8: Pontormo, Portrait of a Bishop (Giovanni della Casa? Niccolò Ardinghelli?), c. 1541-2. Oil on panel, National Gallery, Washington. 4.9: Pontormo, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book, c. 1542. Oil on panel, private collection. 4.10: Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c.1534-8. Oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 4.11: Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in Black, c.1538. Oil or oil and tempera on panel. Formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection, sold Christie’s, 29 January 2014. 4.12: Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c. 1534-38. Oil on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Underdrawing and underpainting in infrared reflectography (Infrared reflectogram, Sherman Fairchild Conservation Center, MMA. In Bambach, ed. Bronzino, 44.) CONCLUSION 5.1: Pontormo, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 1534-5. Oil on panel, Philadelphia Museum of Art. 5.2: Vasari, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 1534. Oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi. CHARTS I: Bronzino, c. 1527-37. II: Pontormo and Bronzino, c. 1529-39 III: Pontormo, c. 1525-30. IV: Pontormo c. 1538-42. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation exists because of Professor David Rosand. It was a great privilege to have him as my graduate advisor, and his loss brings a melancholy note to the project’s end. Professor Rosand’s remarkable skill as a teacher is attested
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